The exchanges of missiles
and air strikes between Gaza and Israel showed no
sign of abating on Monday night, even as leaks of
breakthroughs in talks in Cairo appeared and the
Egyptian prime minister expressed his hope that
"we will reach something soon that will stop this
violence and counter violence".

While the
chances of a ceasefire look slim, certainly within
the critical time frame of 24 to 48 hours
suggested by United States President Barack Obama
in an interview on Sunday, the Middle East is
capable of surprises. There may be a brief moment
of opportunity, and while many such have been
wasted in the past, not all hope of avoiding
further escalations is gone.

The leaked
content of the talks, among other signs, suggests that

the two sides are either
seriously interested in a compromise, or are
trying very hard to give that impression. Hamas
has reportedly asked for the blockade to be
lifted, while the Israelis have requested a
long-term lull of at least 15 years. [1] These and
other terms under discussion go to the core of
what both sides need from each other at the
current moment.

Israel has a strong
interest in prying Gaza out of Tehran's orbit and
plugging the gaping security hole that the Strip
has become for it (even more so if it plans to
attack the Iranian nuclear program in the next
months). Hamas is interested in consolidating
power domestically and reaching out
internationally toward the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt and elsewhere in the region. Incidentally,
this puts it on a collision course with Iran -
mainly because of Syria, from where Hamas was
forced to evacuate its headquarters earlier this
year.

Both Israel and Hamas, furthermore,
share an interest in stealing the thunder of
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is
pushing to become the leader of an implicitly
recognized state at the United Nations later this
month. If both - and specifically the Islamists,
whose slain leader Ahmed al-Jabari had refused to
speak directly to any Israeli in any capacity -
could be persuaded that talking to each other is
more beneficial than fighting, a breakthrough of
unimagined proportions could happen.

In
fact, Jabari had just received a proposal for such
a breakthrough drafted by a group of Israeli and
Palestinian activists a few hours before his
death. When asked by Asia Times Online if he
thought there was a real chance that Jabari would
have accepted the proposal, one of the authors of
the draft, the prominent Israeli peace activist Dr
Gershon Baskin, sighed: "Yes."

According
to Baskin, who also published an op-ed in the New
York Times addressing the Jabari assassination,
"with him died the possibility of a long-term
cease-fire. Israel may have also compromised the
ability of Egyptian intelligence officials to
mediate a short-term cease-fire and placed
Israel's peace treaty with Egypt at risk." [2]

However, reports that Israel has requested
precisely such a lull suggest that the Israeli
leaders think otherwise. One possibility is that
Israel did not trust Jabari as a partner in peace
and wanted to impair the rocket capabilities of
the Gaza militants prior to the start of a truce.
To a certain extent, this conclusion is
understandable: after all, rockets had been flying
liberally into southern Israel for several days at
the time of the arch-terrorist's assassination (a
barrage that had slowed to a trickle, but not
stopped in the final 24 hours when a ceasefire
brokered by Egypt had taken effect). Moreover,
even Jabari may not have been able to rein in
smaller and more militant organizations such as
Islamic Jihad, which is heavily influenced by
Iran.

What is ironic in this reading of
the events is that the man who now leads the
Palestinian negotiators in Cairo is Khaled
Meshaal, the once-hardline supreme chief of the
movement who was set to retire in days. He was
himself the target of a failed assassination
attempt in 1997, ordered by nobody other than the
current Israeli prime minister.

More
recently, however, he issued several relatively
moderate statements and attempted to reconcile
with the Palestinian Authority. In the process he
incurred the wrath of Jabari and his other
political opponents in Gaza, but with several of
them out of the way, his star may be on the rise
again.

Stranger things have happened in
the Middle East, but also much greater
opportunities have been wasted. There exists, too,
a darker interpretation of the developments: if
the talks fail, both Israel and Hamas would want
to claim that they have tried hard to reach a
compromise. They would do this in order to seek
the moral high ground in the inevitable war of
rhetoric and legal arguments that would follow a
bloody land operation.

Among other
negative signs, the Lebanese army discovered two
missiles in southern Lebanon on Monday, aimed at
Israel. Perhaps it was one of the Palestinian
factions in Lebanon which planted them, rather
than Hezbollah, but this is nevertheless a
significant reason for concern (see "The
Levant braces for regional war," Asia Times
Online, November 13, 2012).

Also the West
Bank is seething with unrest. On Monday, two
Palestinians died and over 50 were reportedly
wounded after violent clashes with Israeli
soldiers throughout the territory. This bodes
worse to come, while Hamas support in the West
Bank is reportedly on the rise.

According
to a recent report by the influential intelligence
analysis firm Stratfor, "[Abbas's party] Fatah is
hoping that Hamas and Israel reach a truce as soon
as possible. Indeed, the West Bank group is likely
using its channels with the United States and
Israel toward this end. Clearly, Fatah does not
want protests in the West Bank to go from
supporting Hamas and Gaza to turning against
mismanagement in the West Bank. At the same time,
this could be a reason why Hamas, which seeks a
resurgence in the West Bank, would want to prolong
the conflict somewhat."

It is hard to
ignore a CNN report on Monday that "Three US Navy
amphibious warships are returning to the eastern
Mediterranean to remain on standby in the event
they are needed to assist Americans leaving Israel
in the coming days." While, as the proverb goes,
it is always darkest before dawn, it could be a
very genuine storm approaching. It is unlikely
that a conflict involving Gaza alone would require
the evacuation of Americans.

The hopeful
outlook is that all sides involved appear to have
a clear interest in a long-term truce, and there
is a genuine, albeit brief opportunity to achieve
it. Down the line, this could even lead to genuine
peace. The track record of Palestinians and
Israelis making use of such opportunities is not
good, however, and often great explosions of
violence happen right after one is wasted.